Longan Tong Sui Recipe (龙眼糖水)

Believe it or not, I have just unpacked my luggage–the suitcase of my not-so-recentMalaysiantrip. As I was going through the stuff in my baggage, I realized that I did a bad bad thing. I smuggled brought back a lot of food products from Malaysia, all of them deep buried in the suitcase. Some of them stinky (think belacan and salted fish), some of them are scarce and expensive in the US, and some are so fragile I wrapped them with blankets of papers and tapes…

One of the items I brought back is dried longan(龙眼). While dried longan is not too hard to find in the United States, buying them in Malaysia is a lot cheaper. I love them in my tong sui/dessert (糖水)–the delicate essence of dried longan is always so light yet invigorating…

I usually make my longan dessertwith snow fungus, red dates, and ginkgo nuts. The most blissful thing about this is that I can serve it either warm or cold (with ice added). It’s perfect anytime of the day as a thirst quencher or an after meal dessert.

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My boyfriend’s mom makes a dessert very similiar to this. We (my boyfriend, his sister, his dad, and I) get the task of peeling the ginkgo nuts, not very fun but all that hard work makes the dessert taste so much sweeter. :D

This is like VNese sam bo luong if you add some barley and the thicker kind of seaweed and lotus seeds. :) I wasn’t so fond of it when I was little, but I love it now. Makes me feel like I’m eating a healthy dessert.

Mmmm… Haven’t had this tong sui in a long time. I like the second pic a lot; the fact the bowl isn’t full to the brim but only half-filled suggest someone’s already had their way with it, and if we don’t hurry, it’d be all gone!

I also brought the dried longan back to the UK – but then I just ate them all like raisins – didn’t even cook them! I started nibbling on one and that was it. Not the artist like you! It is a lovely picture.

I like this 糖水 too, and this reminds me of Chinese New Year or some chinese weddings…buahahhah!How did you manage to salvage the ginkgo nuts from their shells, in the end?Hmmm….this dessert has all my fav dessert ingredients.:D

Are there any other desserts or soup one can make with dried longan and jujubes? Because I just don’t have all the ingredients to make the soup about but I do have a lot of dried longan and jujubes :D Those are about the only “chinese herbs” I have in the house.